Venus Express is on the way
Venus Express blasts off from Kazahkstan. © ESA
The Venus Express spacecraft successfully blasted off at 3.33 am this morning (9th November) from a remote site in Kazahkstan. The spacecraft was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on top of a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket and will take 153 days to reach its destination; entering into orbit around Venus in April 2006. The aim of the mission is to spend around 500 days studying the Venusian atmosphere in much greater detail than has been done before.
Venus is the nearest planet to Earth and passes twice as close to our planet than Mars. In terms of its size and mass, Venus is very similar to Earth and yet it has evolved in a very different way. Being closer to the Sun, its atmosphere should be a little warmer than the Earth, but past missions have found that a runaway greenhouse effect has resulted in surface temperatures of around 450°C, which is 400°C hotter than they would otherwise be. Combine this with the mixture of poisonous gases and sulphuric acid rain that has been discovered, and you have a scary vision of an atmosphere that has gone terriibly wrong.
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